Good evening.

I have a question for a really simple rule that i simply failed to get clearence on.

If a hunter has a revealed pack of dogs (i`m loosely translating from the german game here, i hope you guys know what card i am talking about)

it adds +4 initiative. Does this mean that in case hunter and Dracula fight and roll the same (possibly modified) result, the hunter adds 4 to his initiative total on his card?

This would then end with the hunter winning every single tie, right?

This seems incredibly powerful, is there a way for Dracula to destroy the dogs in combat or only trough his cards/encounters?

Or does the +4 initiative mean something else entirely?

Thanks for any help in advance.

I read it the same as you .. the hunter adds +4 to his die roll for initiative.

The first time I played a hunter (I had played Dracula 4 or 5 times in this new revision), I drew a dogs, read it and declared it unbalanced. I couldn't believe that in all my games as Dracule no hunters had thought Dogs worthwhile.

We house ruled it to +2 initiave straight away as a temporary fix, but I did mean to post on here and see if i had mis-interpretted the rules, or if anyone had a better fix.

The dogs seems strong: they are giving immunity to certain encounters and the +4 to initiative, supporting any combat by making almost all ties won by the hunter.

And here is their weakness: they are only supporting the combat. With dogs alone you will never win a fight, you need some other tool to actually _do_ the combat. But with the dogs are taking up one item slot it forces the hunter to get even more specialised against one type of enemy (Dracula or minions). A dogs/crucifix/stake combo is deadly to Dracula. It is also deadly against a minion but to the hunter.

Their other weakness is that they have to be face up to be effective and that gives a lot of help to Dracula in assessing the hunters' strenghts and weaknesses. It seems a minor thing but it isn't.

In our experience (with 30+ games with my group) dogs are good but absolutely not overpowered.

Thank you, it makes more sense after your "strategic evaluation".

Doesn`t seem to be that overpowered now.

Nagypapi makes some good points. Dogs can also be useful for a group of Hunters as well.

A great 4th item for Dr Seward to have (as 99% of the times he won't have 4 event cards).

Ooops, not only had I mis-read the card, I had mis-read the original post.

We had thought the iniative was the D6 roll which was being modified. But now I see it is the value on the card used for ties.

The dog rule is pretty hard to figure out. Is it a +4 modifier on the dice roll or is it +4 on a tie roll ?

It's Initiative, so +4 on ties.

But If it's only +4 initiative on ties, why is the +4 not in a circle like all the other tie initiatives ?

BästiKlassen said:

Because you don't take the 'Dogs' card into your hand when you do combat and you don't play it out in combat but it influences it. It is like an ally, but helping only the hunter who has them.